- In my city in Taiwan, I notice that police cars drive around with their overhead red and blue lights flashing all the time. So how would you know if a cop wanted to pull you over? Would they turn on the siren or high beam you or what?

- I notice that Taiwanese drivers frequently run red lights and make illegal U-Turns. It seems the cops are lax about that kind of thing. Is that true? Does that mean I should start doing the same?

Winston wrote:Some more questions:
- In my city in Taiwan, I notice that police cars drive around with their overhead red and blue lights flashing all the time. So how would you know if a cop wanted to pull you over? Would they turn on the siren or high beam you or what?
- I notice that Taiwanese drivers frequently run red lights and make illegal U-Turns. It seems the cops are lax about that kind of thing. Is that true? Does that mean I should start doing the same?

This depends on where you are. In Taipei the cops are more numerous & less tolerant. In Taichung, my friend drove on the wrong side the road to get to a boboa place, because he was too lazy to make an illegal U-turn.

There's a joke going around that the Chinese Army trained their truck drivers like this, not for the battlefield, but to survive Chinese city traffic:

I strongly disagree with you on that one. Of all the countries I've traveled to, people in China (at least northeast China) seemed by far the most cold, unfriendly, and aggressive. Unless someone is in their family or is their personal friend, Chinese people will treat strangers like garbage. And the more Mandarin you learn, the more you realize all the nasty things Chinese people are saying to you or others.

And as for Taiwan's traffic - I promise you it's much worse in mainland China. China also has the worst driving I've seen anywhere, and by a mile. I've been to many developing countries, and none of them even come close to how people drive in China. Traffic laws are pretty much never enforced. It's very much a "free for all" on China's roads and streets.

Momopi,
How am I supposed to deal with this driving situation in Taiwan?

Taiwanese cities aren't designed for cars to park in, only for scooters, and this includes small cities too, like Chiayi, not just big ones. But if you ride a scooter, you take a big risk because one accident could end your life or put you in critical condition. So in other words, driving in Taiwan puts you between a rock and hard place. It's also dangerous making turns in a car, because every time you do, you have to carefully check for scooters driving alongside you, which are everywhere like ants, lest you knock them over. What happens if you forget to look just once...? Sheesh.

Moreover, on some busy roads, when swarms of scooters are passing next to you, you can't see clearly to be 100 percent sure that it's safe to turn and go through them. That happened to me once, and the cars behind me honked and yelled at me. But what can I do? I can't just cut through a swarm of scooters, because I can't be completely sure that it would be safe with so many scooters to look out for that are so close by with such a slim margin of error! Yet if I don't, the cars behind me get pissed. Sheesh. How do I win? Again, I am between a rock and hard place.

1. I heard that in Taiwan, the meat is not divided into organic free range, and factory farmed. So when you are eating meat in Taiwan, how do you know whether it's organic and free range, or factory farmed?

2. Are cattle in Taiwan fed grains and injected with growth hormones and antibiotics, like in the US?

3. Rock, when you eat all your meat protein in Taiwan, how do you know whether the meat is organic and clean or not?

4. Does Taiwanese food contain GMO's?

5. Does the tap water in Taiwan have fluoride in it?

6. How is it that food is the Taiwanese people's biggest passion, yet Taiwanese people are so thin? It seems like a paradox.

Winston wrote:Also, how come some Taiwanese have darker skin? I never see Japanese or Koreans that are dark. Is there a reason for that?

You obviously haven't seen enough Japanese people. Some Japanese can be very dark and have SE Asian features or even nearly Caucasoid-like or Native American-like features, due to Ainu (northern aboriginal) genes and perhaps some SE Asian genes from very ancient times. Archaeologists have also found that ancient skulls from Japan don't look like those of typical modern-day Asians.

For most of its history, Japan, like Taiwan, was occupied by natives who didn't have typical NE Asian looks.

金城武 Takeshi Kaneshiro has a unique look that would definitely appear very alien to Koreans.

Or,

South Koreans typically aren't very dark, but some North Korean farmers can be dark since they have to be out in the sun all the time. But they all look NE Asian, like Chinese people from Manchuria.

Japanese, on the other hand, are quite mixed. Genetics and archaeology confirms this.
Left: Jomon (Native American-like) phenotype.
Right: Yayoi (Korean-like, Altaic) phenotype.
Geographically, Japan would have been a perfect stepping stone for Native Americans to cross from Asia to the Americas, so this isn't too surprising.

Additionally, these ancient Jomon skulls from Japan show non-Mongoloid features, such as square eye sockets instead of the typically circular ones found in modern-day NE Asians.

Ainus (northern Japanese aboriginals of Hokkaido and also historically northern Honshu) look like this.

Even today many Japanese men can be very hairy.

Bottom line: Many Japanese have ancestry that isn't "typically Asian."